Beaches in Michigan closed due to heavy rain
After a stormy week, 27 beaches in Michigan were either closed or under pollution warnings on Tuesday due to high bacteria levels in the water.
According to Jeff Johnson, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, the above-average rainfall washed pollutants such as goose and seagull droppings or sewage into the lakes, which led to an increase in the number of E. coli bacteria in the water.
“It’s normal for more and more beaches to be closed after rain,” Johnson said. “We’ve had a lot of rain in southeast Michigan recently, and that’s one of the main factors that leads to high bacteria counts due to bird droppings.”
E. coli can cause gastrointestinal problems, fever or rashes when swimmers swim in contaminated water. Johnson said the presence of E. coli can also be an indication that more harmful bacteria may be living in the water.
Of the 26 polluted beaches – all listed on the Michigan Beach Guard, a website operated by EGLE that displays closures and warnings for nearly 2,000 public and private beaches in Michigan – seven are in Oakland County, the county with the most lakes in the state.
In Macomb County, two beaches have been closed since Tuesday – Baypoint Beach in Stony Creek Metropark and St. Clair Shores Memorial Park Beach. In Wayne County, Belle Isle Beach has been closed since Monday. Michigan Beach Guard relies on information from local health departments.
Johnson said the number of polluted beaches was high but not unusual for this time of year.
Mark Hansell, director of the Oakland County Health Department, said the county tests the lakes’ water quality once a week. If samples show E. coli levels that exceed a certain threshold, the beach is closed or a warning is issued. Then the waters are tested daily until contamination levels return to normal.
“If the sample is unsafe or exceeds the water quality standard, we will take samples every day until the bacteria levels return to a safe level,” Hansell said.
The Oakland County Health Department is helping pilot a new E. coli water test called quantitative polymerase chain reaction, Hansell said. The standard method counts individual bacteria and takes a while to get results. qPCR tests, on the other hand, detect E. coli DNA and can provide results within a day.
“The test is very promising because the big advantage of the qPCR method is that we get results much faster,” said Hansell.
Last week’s heavy rainfall was attributed to Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall in Texas on July 8 but quickly weakened to a tropical depression as it swept across the Midwest last week, according to the National Weather Service.
Brian Cromwell, a meteorologist with the Detroit office of the National Weather Service, said the Detroit area has seen an average of 3 to 4 inches of rain over the past week, with areas such as Flint, St. Claire County and Washtenaw County seeing up to 8 inches of rain.
“Last week was a relatively big event for Michigan,” Cromwell said. “We had a lot of flooding because there was too much rain, but in terms of the overall trend, the rainfall was not necessarily unusually high.”
Cromwell said the Detroit metropolitan area received an average of 5.8 inches of rain last summer. That figure is high compared to normal summer rainfall, but not unusual. The region typically receives 6.5 inches of rain in the summer.
“We are on track for a year of above-average rainfall, but that is nothing unusual,” Cromwell said.
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